Contact: A Journal for Contemporary Music (1971-1988) http://contactjournal.gold.ac.uk

Citation

Tilbury, John. 1983. ‘’. Contact, 26. pp. 4-12. ISSN 0308-5066.

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John Tilbury Cornelius Cardew

This article is a revised version of the text of 'Comelius oppressive as anything he had left behind-though in Cardew- a Memorial Lecture', delivered at the a different way: total serialism had achieved the Goldsmiths' College School of Adult and Social status of a religion whose followers defended and Studies, in association with the Music Department of counter-attacked with all the fanaticism and in- the college, on 26 April 1982. tolerance of true believers. It needed the intrusion of into those closed European musical circles I first met Cornelius Cardew at the Dartington to alleviate a situation that had become intolerable. Summer School in August 1959 when we were both 23 Even Boulez, hardly an innocent party in the proceed- years of age. My recollections of that month are hazy ings, commented: 'In Darmstadt between 1952 and and of no particular significance, but some kind of 1958 the discipline of serialization was so severe it rapport must have been established because soon was ridiculous. Cage represented a liberation from after my return to London I received a phone call from this.' Cardew. He had a project in mind, a concert of In 1958 Cardew attended concerts of American for one and two pianos (music by avant-garde music in Cologne by John Cage and the Americans Cage, Feldman, and Wolff, and by David Tudor. The radical content of this music, its Cardew himself), and asked me if I would like to be freshness and audacity, coupled with Tudor's the other pianist. In January of the following year the phenomenal musicianship, made a deep impression concert took place at the Conway Hall, London. on both Cardew and Stockhausen and was without Cardew's performances, in particular of the music of doubt the source of inspiration for Cardew's in- , constitute to all intents and determinate pieces of the early sixties, and probably purposes my first lasting memory of the man as artist. for Stockhausen's first 'moment-form' works. Those floating, sourceless sounds, which he played Cardew's Two Books of Study for Pianists, com- with an unerring sense of timing and an artistry that pleted in the year of Cage's visit to Cologne, reflects was as convincing as it was unconventional, evoked the disruption caused by the American invasion. The an emotional response quite unlike any other I had continuing influence of Stockhausen is discernible in experienced in listening to music, and which was the application of a scale of six dynamics and in intensified by Cardew's profound identification with particular in the mobile character of the material Feldman's work. (within the given space of time the sounds may be How did Cardew's preoccupation with the distributed freely by the performer), but the ideo- American avant garde come about? This is an logical source of the music is to be sought else- important question in the light of the subsequent where-the isolation of tones, the feeling of dis- influence of North American culture on Europe, continuity (which later Cardew rather harshly especially in the sixties: Cage, Buckminster Fuller, criticised as 'laboured spontaneity') and the way- and the abstract expressionist painters, in partiGUlar ward harmonic language (though still constrained by Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns (to whom European considerations of structure) reveal that the Cardew dedicated his Octet 61). Cardew received his new American aesthetic had taken root in European formal musical education at the Royal Academy of music. Music between 1954 and 1957. At this time the In an illuminating diary entry on 1 September 1964, Academy was an extremely conservative institution in which he looks back on Two Books of Study, and it did not look kindly on the music of Schoenberg, Cardew comments: let alone Boulez or Stockhausen. So it was inevitable What I composed in this piece-the image that hovered in that inquiring, restless young souls like Cardew and front of my mind's eye-was a 'Musizierweise' (Mode of his friend Richard Rodney Bennett should have music-making). I invented a way of making music and reacted in the way they did, rejecting what they limited it to such an extent that musicians without construc- regarded as the narrow-minded and bland conserva- tion ideas of their own are in a position to adopt this tism of the English musical establishment. The musizierweise. European avant garde, on the other hand, centred in Darmstadt, paraded some progressive slogans; The indication here is already of his moving away serialism was associated with the scientific method, from music as object towards music as process, and progress, and discovery, and some apologists, such of a concern for the problems of the performers. as Rene Leibowitz, even claimed that serialism was Cardew was one of the first Europeans to grasp not the musical equivalent of the classless society. The just the musical but also the social implications of the music that Cardew wrote during his time at the new American aesthetic. And this was because his Academy, notably the second and third piano response to the music was not merely a cerebral sonatas, certainly owed more to Webern and Boulez rejection of the predominant western European than to his professors. And the performance that he compositional method-total serialism-but a deep- and Bennett gave at the Academy of Boulez's seated reaction to content and meaning, to the new Structures, besides being a considerable technical ways of thinking and feeling, to the idealism, both and musical feat, was probably tantamount to an act of moral and philosophical, that seemed to inform the rebellion in the climate that prevailed there. new American music. 'There is no room for the Under the circumstances Cardew's decision to policeman in art', Cage said in one of his polemics continue his studies and, as it turned out, to work with against the Europeans. Cardew's originality was that Stockhausen in Cologne was not surprising, though he created out of the new aesthetic a kind of music the consequences were not without a certain irony. utterly different from that of the Americans. The The conditions he found in Germany in 1957 were as String Quartet Movement (1961), and in particular

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February Pieces (1959-61) for piano solo, perfectly In a related entry, on 12 September 1967, he wrote: exemplify this new departure, prefiguring the ideo- From America Columbus brought us back syphillis, or logical content of most of Cardew' s output in the early Death through sex; there is no reason why the compliment sixties. The influence of both Cage and Stockhausen should not be returned with myself as the humble vehicle, in is residual; the music possesses a strong impro- the form of total serialism-of Death through music. In the visatory quality, but the dangers of excessive sub- case of serialism the damage has already been done, jectivism (self-indulgence) are circumvented by the Schoenberg is the bearer of that intolerable guilt. 4 highly idiosyncratic and individual application of Having rejected both tonality and serialisrn, it was aleatoric principles. The result is a curious, com- not surprising that a radically minded young corn- pelling discontinuity; weird juxtapositions, irrational poser should have felt attracted to the American avant outbursts, fleeting references to other rnusics, past garde. But in fact Cardew's admiration for Cage had and present, create a kind of psychological dis- little to do with Cage's cornpositional techniques orientation, a hypersensitive music which haunts and (though he once described the notation for Cage's disturbs the memory, reflecting a mysterious, im- Variations I as a 'giant step forward');5 what he penetrable world in total disorder. admired was Cage's rejection of the commodity This expression of human agency at large, the spon- fetishism that had invaded musical composition, for taneous quality in the music-albeit in a chaotic, in- which the super-objectivity of serialisrn and its comprehensible environment -constituted Cardew' s corollary, the preoccupation with the perfection of the bourgeois humanist world outlook at that time; the ideal object, was largely to blame. What also thrust of his creative work throughout the sixties impressed him was Cage's liberation of the per- served to sharpen the various facets of the contra- former from the constraints of oppressive notational diction, the subject/object dichotomy, and this con- complexities, . and perhaps most of all the tinued until he espoused dialectical materialism in the 'democracy' inherent (at least in theory) in Cage's seventies. The late Bill Hopkins, that most perceptive scores. And here is the crux, because this concern for of critics, made the point in his review of Three freedom and democracy, displayed in a number of Winter Potatoes in the Musical Times in 1967: highly sophisticated indeterminate compositions 'Cardew was compelled to weigh up the claims of from the early sixties, though in an abstract and artifice (selection and ordering) against those of the intellectualised fashion, informs Cardew's entire spontaneity which for him represents musical truth.' 1 musical career. With him 'indeterminacy' was not Cardew himself expresses the dichotomy with ref- simply another cornpositional technique, displacing a erence to improvisation in a diary entry of 1967: previously discredited one, it was a logical musical I compose systems. Sounds and potential sounds are expression of his humanism: humanism is the vital around us all the time-they're all over. What you can do is thread that runs through all his musical activities, to insert your logical construct into this seething mass-a making for a continuity that overrides even the most system that enables some of it to become audible. That's radical stylistic changes in his work. His rejection of why it's such an orgiastic experience to improvise-instead total serialisrn freed him as a composer; with his of composing a system to project into all this chaotic espousal of indeterminacy, creative freedom was potential, you simply put yourself in there (you too are a system of sorts after all) and see what action that suicidal also extended to the performer. deed precipitates. 2 In the magazine Performance the composer David Bedford described his experience with Cardew's For a short period serialisrn had been a source of indeterminate pieces: intellectual fascination for Cardew and had acted as a 'logical construct' in his student works, but in the last Speaking as a performer in many of Cardew's early works it analysis the mechanistic philosophy that under- must be said that the experience was totally rewarding. Our creativity was constantly being challenged, and the pinned it was anathema to him and he rebelled to free empathy of the performers, channelled into producing a himself of it. This dualism-on the one hand asceti- coherent piece of music despite sometimes sketchy and cism, the desire and respect for dogma and purity sometimes paradoxical instructions, was often remarkable. (which also expressed itself in his preoccupation It should be pointed out that none of Cardew's works ever over a lengthy period from the age of 23 with gave total freedom to the performer. The instructions were Wittgenstein's writings and later with Marxism- a guide which focused each individual's creative instinct on Leninism), on the other hand the spontaneous and a problem to be solved-how to interpret a particular libertarian actions that characterised his life-style-is system of notation using one's own musical background the key to an understanding of Cardew's rnotivations and attitudes.s and achievements, both musical and political. These comments highlight the all-important differ- The references to serialisrn in his diaries are mostly ence between Cage's and Cardew's applications of negative and occasionally humorous. In 1967, by aleatoric techniques. Cage's notational systems pre- which time, of course, serialisrn was for him very suppose a denial of the influence of musical back- much a thing of the past, he wrote: ground (that is, history), whether Cage's own or the Since the war Folk music has become dissipated and inter- performers', and moreover generally allow for no nationalized (at least in Europe and America) to the point spontaneous expression during performance. The that one can hardly call it folk music. This fate can be thrust of Cardew's musical development, already compared to the heroic pseudo-scientific universalism of evident in the indeterminate scores of the early serial music in the early 50s; at that time you were quite sixties, was in precisely the opposite direction- likely to hear serial compositions by a Bulgarian, a towards an ethnic, spontaneous music making, which Japanese, or a South African on the same programme and found its ideal expression between the years 1966 be virtually unable to tell the difference between them. At and 1971 when Cardew was a member of the that time serial music was not available on disc, so we may attribute the effect to the pervasiveness of the idea. improvisation group AMM. However, death in a vacuum is not a happy thought and What Cardew did share with Cage was the ability to around 1960 many of the reputable composers were take calculated risks: risk taking is part and parcel of beating a hasty retreat, taking with them just as much of the both indeterminacy and improvisation. Octet 61, for original idea as they were able to carry. Nono went into example, is an indeterminate piece, that is, the political music. Stockhausen into the grand operatic performer has an active hand in determining its form; tradition. Boulez into impressionism and a glorious career it consists of 60 signs derived from conventional as a conductor.3 musical notation, each of which constitutes a single 6 musical event. The task for the performer is not only guises: triangles, circles, circle derivations, squares, to interpret each sign but to join the signs together to square derivations, irregular shapes, etc. (Example create musical phrases, musical continuity (Example 2). One way of interpreting Treatise might be to 1). Of the Octet Cardew wrote: match these graphic symbols with musical cate- The greatest music is always explicit-like Webem, if you gories-triads, trills, irregular tremolos, periodic dig him. In Octet 61 I realise that explicitness has been rhythms, etc.; shapes and positions of symbols could sacrificed. In this research it is always necessary to be used to determine, for example, dynamics. This sacrifice trusted concepts. Afterthought. As long as there is might be the method of interpretation that a conven- no blur in the thinking . . . 7 tionally trained musician would adopt-a non- During the next five years, from 1963 to 1968, reading musician might take a much freer, more Cardew made two such sacrifices: the first was of spontaneous approach. What Cardew wanted was traditional notation in favour of graphic notation; the that in playing Treatise 'each musician will give of his own music-he will give it as his response to my second was of notation in favour of improvisation. 9 Two activities tower above all others during this music, which is the score itself'. period: his mammoth 193-page graphic composition The history of Treatise is documented in detail by Treatise; and the improvisation group AMM. A diary Cardew in the Treatise Handbook, which appeared entry on New Year's Day 1963 anticipates this radical in print some years after the completion of the score. development: The first part of the Handbook consists of working notes, which shed light on many aspects of Cardew's A good man watches, experiences, the complete devasta- tion of his private world and survives. Then he moves back musical thought. into the real world and grasps it with his mind. So he Notation is a way of making people move. If you lack other recreates it, and it is no longer private. It is everybody's ways like aggression or persuasion. The notation should do world ... To do something constructive you have to look it. This is·the most rewarding aspect of work on a notation. beyond yourself. Humanity in general is your sphere (not Trouble is: Just as you find your sounds are too alien, people). Self-expression lapses too easily into mere intended 'for a different culture', you make the same documentation. discovery about your beautiful notation: no one is willing to 1 Later in the year, on 4 September, there is another understand it. No one moves. o philosophical entry, but now containing a direct Visually Treatise is sensational, so beautiful as to be reference to Treatise: inhibiting for all but the boldest spirits-its visual My age of romanticism is over. Sensations, moments drop impact disconcertingly puts most performances of it away. My desire is to experience long-term continuities as in the shade. Treatise releases music from the beautifuL-In Treatise to create the coherent code which constraints of conventional notation; it demands new expresses the truths we do not know and cannot live up concepts of time, new sounds, and new attitudes to to ... To be aware of the psychological groundings of your old sounds, which many classically trained musicians musical strivings (being, timid physically, as a boy, I seem unable to bring to it. became bold in spirit) and still leave the ground. In 1964-5 Cardew worked on a number of pieces In Buffalo in 1966 Cardew described the genesis of concurrently with Treatise. But Treatise was the Treatise: dominant activity to the extent that at least two of these pieces, Bun no.2 for Orchestra (1964) and Volo I was 23 when I first came across Wittgenstein's Tractatus: Solo (1965), are versions of Treatise in some form. right from the first sentence, handwritten by Slad [David Why 'Bun'? He gave me two off-the-cuffreasons when Sladen, an old school-friend] as a foretaste before he gave I asked him: a bun is what you give to an elephant at me the book. 'The world is everything that is the case.' It made a deep impression on me. The name Treatise (from the zoo, and that was how he felt when he gave the Tractatus): a thorough investigation. Of what? Of every- work to an orchestra to play; and the piece is like a thing, of nothing. Like the whole world of philosophy. I bun-filling but not substantial! Of the other works of started work on it in 1963 and have worked on it this period Material (1964) is a transcription for any inconsistently ever since. In that time it has lost some of its ensemble of harmony instruments of the Third abstract quality, autobiographical aspects have crept in. Orchestral Piece (1960). Three Winter Potatoes was But then there are autobiographical wisps to be read into completed in 1965 and Bun for Orchestra no.J was Wittgenstein's Tractatus-the whole takes on a slightly written for Petrassi's composition course, which different autobiographical slant in view of his later rejection of part of it. 8 Cardew attended in Rome between February and June 1964. Treatise finally appeared complete in 1967. It is a David Bedford remarks that Cardew 'brought a continuous weaving and combining of a host of typically English elegance and wit to even some of his graphic elements (of which only a few are recog- apparently more eccentric compositions'. Memories nisably related to musical symbols) into a long visual of You and Solo with Accompaniment (both 1964) are composition, the meaning of which in terms of sounds two cases in point, but an ironic gloss conceals their is not specified in any way. Any number of musicians, true significance. Both these works seem to be using any media, are free to participate in a reading of nostalgic reflections on Cardew's musical past, the score, and each is free to interpret it in his own referring respectively to the two composers whose way. The graphic subject matter appears in various influence shaped his early career. Memories of You is

Example 1 Octet 61 Reproduced by kind permission of Hinrichsen Edition, Peters Edition Limited, London

--BnJ -@+ -0lf ... t* -e

Example 2 Treatise Reproduced by kind permission of Hinrichsen Edition, Peters Edition Limited, London

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a homage to Cage. The score consists of 22 diagrams It is not the exclusive privilege of music to have a history- of a grand piano with instructions to make sounds at sound has history too. Industry and modern technology specific points in and around it; Cage's Concert for have added machine sounds and electronic sounds to the piano and orchestra (1957 -8) contains virtually the primeval sounds of thunderstorm, volcanic eruption, same notation. The accompaniment part of Solo with avalanche and tidal wave. It is to the 'history of sound' that Accompaniment consists of a number of 'matrices'; AMM tries to contribute something. 'Informal' sound has a power over our emotional responses that 'formal' music the parameters of the basic elements in a matrix wax does not, in that it acts subliminally rather than on a cultural and wane according to the composer's complex level. This is a possible definition of the area in which AMM system of notation, which seems to allude to is experimental. We are searching for sounds and for Stockhausen's Plus-Minus. The relatively simple solo responses that attach to them, rather than thinking them up, part is thrown into sharp relief by an extremely busy preparing them and producing them. The search is and complex accompaniment so that an ironical conducted in the medium of sound and the musician himself comment is made on the traditional relationship is at the heart of the experiment.12 between the two. It was the humanising component of spontaneity in In AMM Cardew encountered, perhaps for the first improvised music, which finds expression in the time, musicians as uncompromising as himself, who creative dialogue between musicians at the point of had already entered the uncharted territory of music making, that Cardew valued so highly. In AMM improvisation and who would risk all in the making of he found the embodiment of his ideas and feelings each performance. A short entry in Cardew's diary about music and freedom taken a stage further. On for 1965 reads like a prophetic description of AMM the relationship between Treatise and AMM he wrote music: in 1970: Music is a vagrant; it has no fixed abode. It's a menace to I now regard Treatise as a transition between my earlier society. It needs cleaning up. The impossibility of abolish- preoccupation with problems of musical notation and my ing music. Its omnipresence. Its uncatchability. Perhaps present concerns-improvisation and a musical life. Joining after all we have to step down and let music pursue its own 11 AMM was the turning point, both in the composition of course. Treatise and in everything I had thought about music up to 13 The importance of AMM for Cardew cannot be then. overestimated, as he acknowledged himself. Mutual The latter part of the sixties and the early seventies understanding within the group reached a depth that parallel the immediately preceding period: Treatise he had never experienced in concert-hall music. The and AMM, the related dominant preoccupations of four original members of AMM were , the earlier period, are matched in the later one by two Eddie Prevost, Lou Gare, and Lawrence Sheaff, all of mutually determining activities-The Great Learning whom came from a jazz background. They met and the Scratch Orchestra. regularly for sessions that generally lasted about two The monumental Great Learning (1968-70), hours, with no formal breaks or interruptions, though Cardew's masterpiece, incorporates experimental there would sometimes occur extended periods of techniques into tonal and even modal frameworks. near silence. In an essay entitled 'Towards an Ethic of Indeed, it is a significant feature of many of the pieces Improvisation' Cardew wrote: of this period, including Volo Solo and Three Winter 8

Potatoes (both 1965)-brilliant virtuoso piano works The Great Learning, a large-scale choral work in and compendiums of avant-garde pianistic tech- seven movements (the duration of the whole is niques-that they contain paragraphs that lend around seven hours), based on one of the Confucian themselves easily to tonal analysis; the tonal ref- scriptures, is the magnificent realisation of this erences here go a good deal further than the fleeting projection. As Michael Nyman points out: 'The ethical allusions in, for example, February Pieces of 1959-61 purity is mirrored by Cardew's use of sound re- (Example 3). sources. The Great Learning appears to come to rest The reason for the adoption of a more traditional at a point of redefinition of the natural, concrete, real language in his compositions is clarified by a physical properties of (sounding) things'. 15 The consideration of the direction Cardew was taking 'sounding things' are of every sort: stone struck socially and even politically in the latter part of the against stone, metal against metal, wood on skin, bow decade. Throughout the period he was becoming less on string, whistles, drums, voices, reciting, shouting, and less concerned with beautiful artefacts and more singing, chanting, howling, laughing, giiiros, rattles, and more involved with people and their ability to jingles, musical boxes, toy pianos, jews harps, water make their own music. He began to assume a more drops. The Great Learning includes games, impro- educative role-to which he was perfectly suited visation rites, dumb shows; there are single-line through his strong democratic sentiments, his ability extended melodies (odes) written in conventional to teach by example, and not least his genius for notation, and graphic notation as the basis for improvising. Musical education is what Schooltime improvisations. But each of the seven paragraphs has Compositions (1967) is about. The work is a note- a clear-cut image, such that it would be impossible to book of observations, ideas, notations, hints, mistake one for another. diagrams, concepts, scientific experiments, geo- Despite his reputation as a controversial figure, as metric analogies-some direct, some oblique, but the enfant terrible of the English musical scene, mostly presented as 'facts' with no covering instruc- Cardew never insulted or abused his audience, he tions. For Cardew each composition was a matrix to never subscribed to the theory of epater le draw out the interpreters' feelings about certain bourgeois; his music, even in the later political and topics or materials. Here the different matrices grew militant works, is never in the least aggressive. But he around such things as words, melody, vocal sounds, was marvellously unpredictable and original: the triangles, pleasure, noise, working to rule, will/ music sharpens social and psychological contra- desire, keyboard. Some of the matrices serve as a dictions so that, from confronting the music, the measure of virtuosity, others of courage, tenacity, audience finally comes to confront itself. This un- alertness, and so on. They point to the heart of some predictable music naturally produces unpredictable real matter, mental or material. The score tells the responses. At a performance of the first paragraph of interpreter the general area of his potential action- The Great Learning at the Cheltenham Festival in he may wish or have the talent to play, or sing, or 1968 the audience split into two factions, one support- construct, or illumine, or take exercise of one sort or ing and one opposing the music, which because ofthe another, and can draw out his interpretation in that uproar could hardly be heard. In the artists' room direction. after the concert an elderly gentleman, who looked For Cardew there were no two ways about it: like a retired colonel, pushed through the crowd to people could be encouraged, inspired, or even confront the composer; he grabbed Cardew's hand cajoled, but ultimately they had to be trusted to make and said: 'Thank you Mr Cardew, what a relief to hear their own music on the basis of their own back- your music after all this horrible modern stuff.' ground, experience, and attitudes. In these new The Scratch Orchestra, to whom The Great compositions he subtly defines the areas-emotional, Learning is dedicated, was founded by Michael physical, psychological, and historical-in which the Parsons, and Cardew himself, and performer operates, but there is no question of emerged out of Cardew's composition class at controlling the interpretation, either directly or by Morley College in London in 1969 (in fact at least two some back-door method involving 'chance opera- paragraphs of The Great Learning had been tions'. At the same time, however, he was still completed before the Scratch Orchestra was grappling with the idea of involving musically formed). It was an enterprising body of around 40 educated people (people trained in musical estab- performers of varied skills, who played all kinds of lishments) in his compositions. In 1967 he wrote: experimental music-by Cage, Cardew, Wolff, Riley, I see no possibility of turning to account the tremendous Young, Rzewski, and themselves-in all kinds of musical potential that musically educated people evidently situations and for all classes of people: for Cornish represent, except by providing them with what they want: farm-workers in village squares, for the young traditionally notated scores of maximum complexity. The industrial workers of the north-east, and for both most hopeful fields are those of choral and orchestral urban and rural communities on the Continent, as well writing since there the individual personality (which a as for music lovers who frequented the Royal Festival musical education seems so often to thwart) is absorbed Hall. The Scratch Orchestra consisted of an assort- into a larger organism, which speaks through its individual 14 ment of people from various walks of life, some of members as if from some higher sphere. them with considerable artistic talent, who loved and

Example 3 Three Winter Potatoes, no.2 "'Universal Edition (London) Ltd. Reproduced by kind permission of the publishers

--v ---- pl# 9 needed music. There was no more enthusiastic, more product of a period of transition. Written in 1973, it is committed collection of individuals working in the the third of Three Bourgeois Songs, settings of field of contemporary art at that time. Chinese poems from an anthology selected by Despite the ultra-democratic procedures that the Confucius, and is an arrangement for voice and piano Scratch Orchestra evolved for every aspect of its of a melody from Paragraph 5 of The Great Learning. activities, Cardew was very much the unproclaimed In an introduction to a performance of the songs authority, a father figure to whom people looked for Cardew wrote: guidance and inspiration. The Scratch Orchestra bore The reason for presenting these songs is to get to grips with his stamp, and in fact it was the embodiment and bourgeois thought, bourgeois emotions. In short, what is realisation of the ideas he had formulated about bourgeois ideology? . . . The third song, Turtledove, musical life over a long period. The first two years of purports to have been written by a woman, this time in the Scratch Orchestra's existence were idyllic, and praise of her ruler. He is depicted as the wise, benevolent, the performances and compositional output were generous and modest ruler, above all he is the mirror of prolific. But the nature and intensity of its activities nature-his way is natural, therefore destined to survive created problems, and complaints and disillusion- 10,000 years. It is not hard to see who these sentiments ment began to surface. Cardew opened a 'discontent serve. In the first poem they serve the man, and in this one file', which functioned therapeutically for a while but they serve the ruler. Further, they glorify the social relations that put the man or the ruler in the position he's in. For this did not relieve the underlying tensions. The situation reason, no matter whether written by the lowest serving- eventually reached crisis point. At one of the meet- maid, these poems are ruling-class ideology. That's the ings two members of the Orchestra presented an intellectual side. What about the emotional side? Basically analysis of the predicament, which pinpointed a ecstatic submission, either to the power of the man, or to the fundamental disunity of theory and practice as the eternal processes of nature whereby the master knows principal source of discontent and frustration: in best just like the mother turtle over her childrenY theory the Scratch Orchestra believed in integration In the early seventies Cardew spent considerable and gregariousness, in practice it was isolationist and time and energy criticising and repudiating his earlier parochial; in theory it rejected the musical establish- works, including The Great Learning. In China the ment, in practice it asked for support (Arts Council Communist party had initiated an anti-Confucius grants, BBC television and Festival Hall appear- campaign in which, as a European supporter of Mao, ances); in theory it wished to be an instrument of Cardew participated vigorously. His subsequent inspiration, in practice it appeared to many as a repudiation of Maoism may invalidate part (but pessimistic symptom of a system in decay; and so on. certainly not all) of his fierce polemic against the The Scratch Orchestra was trapped in the classic avant garde in his book, Stockhausen Serves anarchist's dilemma; it willed one thing and caused its Imperialism (1974), which was written during his opposite. The corner-stone of the analysis was a Maoist period. He claimed that the aspirations of the lengthy quotation from the English Marxist avant garde, which had attracted young composers Christopher Caudwell, which generated consider- like himself, had turned into their opposites. Scientific able discussion. The passage concerned, which investigation had become mystical pseudo-science- comes from Caudwell's essay on D. H. Lawrence, for example, in Stockhausen's Gruppen investigation deals with the function of art and the role of the artist of the structures of vocal sound had been applied in a in bourgeois society: totally unscientific way. Consciousness and sensi- But art is not in any case a relation to a thing, it is a relation tivity had become super-consciousness in an ever- between men, between artist and audience, and the art narrowing sphere-for example, the human ability to work is only like a machine which they must both grasp as cope with mathematical relationships and other part of the process. The commercialisation of art may revolt complexities of performance had developed at the the sincere artist, but the tragedy is that he revolts against it expense of social consciousness and the ability to still within the limitations of bourgeois culture. He attempts to forget the market completely and concentrate on his communicate. And consciousness of the formal relation to the art work, which now becomes still further problems had increased so much as to exclude hypostatised as an entity-in-itself. Because the art work is consciousness of the content. Progress and dis- now completely an end-in-itself, and even the market is covery at the frontiers of a new kind of music had forgotten, the art process becomes an extremely indi- become detached from the source of all progress and vidualistic relation. The social values inherent in the art discovery, namely the life of the people; cut off from form, such as syntax, tradition, rules, technique, form, this source the new music had withered and died, and accepted tonal scale, now seem to have little value, for the 16 inevitably become a reactionary weight holding back art work more and more exists for the individual alone. further development. The avant garde had finally The Caudwell essay made (I believe) a profound made the transition from illusion to disillusion. impression on Cardew, not because it imparted new At the time of his death I think it is true to say that thoughts, but because it crystallised his own thoughts Cardew's position on the avant garde and modernism and feelings, and he began to identify with Marxism. had not changed. But he had shown a renewed The formation of the Scratch Orchestra was the interest in improvised music, and on Keith Rowe's culmination of Cardew's career within-or at least on invitation he had agreed to take part in an AMM the fringes of-the musical establishment. His pro- performance of Treatise. The blanket repudiation of found commitment to the democratic ideals of the the past was associated with the discredited Mao, Orchestra led inevitably to his, and several other and in a speech on 'Culture', which Cardew delivered members', politicisation. His socialism was the at an Internationalist Youth Concert in London on logical consequence not just of his involvement with 9 August 1980, as representative ofthe Revolutionary the Scratch Orchestra but of the experiences and Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist), he direction of his life up to that point. His deeply rooted said: 'When we say "new culture", "proletarian morality and tenacious humanism finally found a culture", we mean, as Lenin said, a culture which political purpose, which embraced and broadened must assimilate and rework the best of all previous previous preoccupations and achievements. cultures.' Cardew's position may have begun to Inevitably Cardew's music changed, but not as approximate to Brecht's who remarked that there violently as some critics have tried to make out. The was no need to worry about presenting bold and Turtledove for voice and piano is an interesting unusual material to a working-class audience as long 10 as the members of that audience felt they could relate Elsewhere Cardew gives a concrete example of this to the content of what was presented to them, as long complex composer-audience relationship. A diary as that content corresponded in some way to their entry in 1973 reads: reality. The East is Red, for violin and piano, is a virtuoso piece, Hanns Eisler, a composer whom Cardew greatly depicting the transformation of a simple folk tune into a admired, once said: 'I have always striven to write solemn national anthem and then showing the lilt of the folk music that serves Socialism. This was often a difficult tune within that; it was played in a concert of modern music and contradictory exercise, but the only worthy one in the British Centre Berlin on Feb. lOth. The audience for artists of our time. '18 Throughout the last ten years responded enthusiastically and the piece was played again; of his life Cardew grappled with this 'difficult and the other pieces were received with sighs and groans. The contradictory exercise' and it is part of the tragedy of critics could make nothing of it; one could not make out whether it was ironic, and another could not detect any his death that, in the opinion of many, he was on the critique of socialism in the piece. Was I backward to brink of achieving a valid and meaningful result. compose it? Were the people backward to enjoy it? '!'his is Initially he made what he himself regarded as bad nonsense. There is nothing to be gained by restricting the errors, such as his commitment to Maoism, but his productive activity of artists. 19 active involvement in politics gave his artistic work a new focus and direction. In 1980 he organised and The majority of compositions during this period directed an international choir at the International were political songs, written usually with a specific Youth Camp in Germany. function in mind. He collaborated on songs with his American socialist composer friends W olff and I'm convinced [he once wrote] that when a group of people Rzewski; songs for Brecht's The Measures Taken get together and sing the Internationale this is a more (1976) were written in collaboration with the 'Songs complex, more subtle, a stronger and more musical for our Society' class at Goldsmiths' College; and experience than the whole of the avant garde put together. Resistance Blues This is not a pseudo-scientific fantasy but represents real (1976) was composed for a concert people in the real world engaged in the most important at Brixton Prison. Bethanien Song (1974) exemplifies struggle of all-the class struggle. Cardew's internationalism; it was written for a campaign (in which Cardew himself was active) to Cardew took up the struggle in the field of music and save a children's hospital in one of the poorest culture, performing and singing at May Day and anti- quarters of West Berlin. The authorities had planned fascist demonstrations, and in support of the Irish to pull down the hospital and erect an 'artists' centre' people's struggle for national liberation. He played in in its place. In an introduction to the song Cardew many parts of Ireland, including the Andersonstown explained: Community Centre, a Republican stronghold in Belfast, where during his performance of Lid of me It [Bethanien Song] embodies our demand for a children's Granny's Bin polyclinic in Bethanien, not an artists' centre. It sings of our four armed British soldiers entered the children's future, threatened by the myriad abuses of hall and began to harrass the audience. Later Cardew capitalist society. It derides bourgeois art, exposes the and his musician colleagues were arrested by the politics of the urban planners, and indicates the per- RUC, held and questioned for several hours. spectives of revolutionary change, with the working people Cardew's commitment to socialism during the last of all nationalities uniting to take their destiny into their own decade of his life is awe-inspiring. His notebooks hands. reveal the depth of his study of Marx and Lenin and, Bethanien Song was taken up by the people and most important, the way in which he applied these became the rallying song for the huge campaign. principles to every situation. His activity reached As well as some instrumental solo pieces- heroic proportions: he was involved 24 hours a day, Mountains (1977) for bass clarinet, and The Workers' composing, performing, touring, organising, writing, Song (1978) for violin-Cardew produced several lecturing, analysing, meeting, discussing, demon- large-scale 'concert' works for piano during the strating on the streets (for which he was imprisoned), seventies: Piano Album (1973), Thalmann Variations and militantly opposing a decadent exploitative (1974), Vietnam Sonata (1976), Boolavogue (1981) system and its ugly, ever growing offspring, racism- for two pianos, and WeSingfortheFuture (1981). The racism. An entry in his diary reads: pieces in Piano Album are the first essays in a new The artist should think to himself do I really want the piano style. In the accompanying notes Cardew revolution to come? Or is it simply an 'inspiring' possibility wrote: to juggle with? Genuinely desiring the revolution, this implies the correct class stand and the proletarian world I have discontinued composing music in an avant-garde outlook. Only from this position can the 'benefit of the idiom for a number of reasons: the exclusiveness of the people' really be considered. The people will benefit (in the avant-garde, its fragmentation, its indifference to the real long term) only through revolution. Making the revolution= situation in the world today, its individualistic outlook and serving the people. Two questions that occupy me at not least its class character (the other characteristics are present. The necessity of building the Party. The necessity virtually products of this). of building revolutionary culture. Cardew's concern for the English national tradition He recognised that these tasks were enormous. On became increasingly evident in the later years, not the problem of presenting political music, revolution- only in his speeches and conversations but also in his ary music, to an audience, he wrote: music. Arrangements of songs such as Watkinson's 13 and The Blackleg Miner reflect his commitment to Music backs up, supports the social conscience of its folk and popular music, while both Boolavogue and audience (which is also its indirect producer). Thus when we try and write revolutionary music for the usual audience We Sing for the Future clearly reveal a debt to 16th- we're faced with the insurmountable problem of giving it a and 17th-century art music-the influence of the form that backs up the bourgeois class consciousness of Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, for example, is apparent in the audience. If we succeed then the revolutionary content sections of Boolavogue (Example 4). At the same is turned around to serve the bourgeois audience in its time there are textures and rhythmic devices which, ideas and prejudices. If we fail, then the revolutionary in an interesting way, betray the influence of content remains but does not touch the audience-you get Cardew's earlier, avant-garde music. He was still an the negative reaction either on the grounds that it's bad 'experimentalist', but now the music is imbued with a music, or on the grounds that it is an attack on the audience spirit of passion and drive which reflects the intense (on their bourgeois consciousness). political life he was leading. Cardew did not really 11

Example 4 Boolavogue a true revolutionary, but his poetry was far more interesting and natural.' In the heat of the last ten .... u - rt-: years it has been easy to forget the poetry. (He had ;uw ._ put it aside himself, though it always emerged.) His zrv - best music and music making had a floating, poetic _...... quality: the inscription at the beginning of one of his ... 'I" .,.. "1 1..at... J,l- + nrn last pieces, Boolavogue, reads 'try and make it float'; -- the same quality characterised his performances of ... + _.,. Feldman's music in the early days, and his bold but sensitive piano playing is turned to great advantage in . ..,. his recordings of Ives's violin sonatas with Janos ..... T . .. r Negyesy. . In his essay 'Towards an Ethic of Improvisation' .... - Cardew includes seven virtues that a musician can { develop. The seventh virtue is the acceptance of =t -,_. ... !.-¥" death. The essay ends with these prophetic lines: I/\ - ""' From a certain point of view improvisation is the highest r r r r ., 1" r r r mode of musical activity, for it is based on the acceptance of ( music's fatal weakness and essential and most beautiful characteristic-its transience. I -:u__ . The desire always to be right is an ignoble taskmaster, as . f)i is the desire for immortality. The performance of any vital action brings us closer to death; if it didn't it would lack l - ...... --w---w: vitality. Life is a force to be used and if necessary used up. """ 'Death is the virtue in us going to its destination.' [Lieh ..... - ,_.,.., D - .,. T Tzu] 21 My last memory of Comelius Cardew is of an anti- -9-- fascist concert, which he had organised himself, only (' a week before he was killed. He was playing the piano, accompanying, and singing to a packed tK\ audience in a community hall in Camden. Many "' 1982, The Cornelius Cardew Foundation. Reproduced by kind members of London ethnic groups were in the permission of the publishers audience and participating. It was a far cry from the begin to write 'different' music in the seventies; it was international festival of contemporary music where always his music, which developed and changed he had begun his career, but it was the destination he inexorably on the basis of his activity as a committed had consciously chosen, and which he had reached revolutionary. by forcing his music into life, by making the act of In his obituary in the Siiddeutsche Zeitung on 29 composition something more than the mere manipu- December 1981 Dieter Schnebel wrote, 'Cardew's lation of sound. originality lies in his abandonment of originality'; he went on to remark that whatever influences Cardew John Tilbury is chairman of The Comelius Cardew quite openly embraced-whether Cage, Stockhausen Foundation, which has been set up to promote the Petrassi, or even Tchaikovsky-all his music bears appreciation and understanding of music, with partic- unmistakable, individual stamp. What Cardew re- ular reference to the life and work of Comelius nounced over the last ten years was the market Cardew. The Foundation aims to publish and make mentality, a corollary of which in the West has been an available Cardew's works, to encourage perform- obsession with 'originality', the often unconscious ances of his music, and to help young composers who need to produce something 'new' at all costs. In this share his aims and aspirations. More information may sense he abandoned originality, but never his indi- be obtained from the Comelius Cardew Foundation, viduality, which he consciously placed in the service 26 Leyton Park Road, London ElO. of the socialist collective. The composer John Paynter quoted a letter from The Guardian: 1 Musical Times, vol.l08 (1967), p.739. Having sat through most of Act 1 of a ballet at the Royal 2 OJ?era House while two ladies next to me talked incessantly Diary entry, 18 January 1967, headed 'Lecture forUniv. of I nsked remonstrance. One of them replied, 'But it's Illinois 25.11.67'. only music. Is there any reply to this?2o 3 Notes for a lecture delivered at the State University of New York at Buffalo, 1967. Cardew would have relished such an opportunity 4 Ibid. more than most. Over the last ten years of his life he came to see the development of music as inseparable 5 Diary entry, 1 September 1964. from ma.n's struggle against privilege, injustice, 6 Performance (April-May 1982). systematised greed, and exploitation. He believed 7 Diary entry, 17 February 1963, headed 'for lecture on that it was only through the combination of artistic and Indeterminacy'. political action that contemporary music could be 8 Diary entry, headed 'Nov 18th 66 Buffalo'· Cardew was dragged out of its isolation. living in Buffalo at that time. ' Comelius Cardew was a complex man. If we 9 Treatise Handbook (London: Peters Edition, 1971), neglect or ignore aspects of his character because p.x. they a.x:e uncomfortable, we are in danger of doing 10 Ibid., p.iii. hun and ourselves a disservice, and we shall 11 ne1ther understand nor appreciate his life. Cardew Diary entry, 25 February 1965. became a revolutionary; he was always a poet. Soon 12 Treatise Handbook, p.xviii. after his death an American composer friend, Alvin 13 From the introduction to a BBC broadcast of Treatise on Curran, wrote in a letter to me, 'Comelius was always 8 February 1970.